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This article was published on October 10, 2014

Pay-per-laugh? This comedy club tracks your facial expressions to decide how much you pay


Pay-per-laugh? This comedy club tracks your facial expressions to decide how much you pay

Facial recognition technology can be used for many ends, including tagging people in photos and ID-ing criminals. But what about detecting how funny you find a joke?

Designed to combat dwindling ticket sales, a Barcelona comedy club is trialling a new pay-per-laugh scheme that tracks your facial expressions to establish how hilarious you find the on-stage shenanigans. Each seat has a tablet attached to the back of it, which analyses your eyes and mouth for the merest suggestion of mirth.

As the BBC reports, for every laugh induced, you’ll pay €0.30 (about $0.40), though you’ll never pay more than €24 ($30). So the funnier the show, the more out of pocket you’ll be. Or, put another way, the more you enjoy the show, the more you pay.

Comedy club charges per laugh with facial recognition [BBC]

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